The Laurel Tripod and the Killing of the Philosophers

This is what I have been able to gather about the philosophers of the church at that time. As for the pagans, they were nearly all wiped out at about the time I have been describing. Some of them, who had a reputation for excelling in philosophy and who were deeply displeased at the progress of the Christian religion, set about finding out who would succeed Valens on the throne of the Roman Empire. To gain this insight into the future they turned to every kind of divination. After various incantations they built a tripod of laurel wood, and finished with the invocations and words they are accustomed to use, so that the emperor’s name would be shown by gathering up the letters that the device of the tripod and the prophecy pointed out, one letter at a time. They were waiting with open mouths for Theodore, a man who held a high military post in the palace. He was a pagan and a learned man. The letters as they fell, coming as far as the delta of his name, misled the philosophers, and so they expected that Theodore would very soon be emperor. When their undertaking was reported, Valens was beside himself with anger, as if a plot had been laid against his life. So all of them were arrested. Theodore and the makers of the tripod were ordered to be put to death, some by fire, others by the sword. For the same reason the most brilliant philosophers of the empire were killed as well. Since the emperor’s anger knew no check, the death penalty reached even men who were not philosophers but wore clothing like theirs. So those who followed other callings would not put on the crocotium or the tribonium, out of suspicion and fear of danger, so as not to seem to be practicing magic and sorcery. I do not in the least think that right-thinking people will blame the emperor for such anger and cruelty more than they blame the philosophers for their rashness and their unphilosophical undertaking. The emperor, absurdly supposing that he could put his successor to death, spared neither those who had prophesied nor the man their prophecy pointed to. And it is said that he did not spare those who bore the same name of Theodore, some of whom were men of distinction, whether their names were exactly the same or only similar, beginning with theta and ending with delta. The philosophers, on the other hand, acted as though the removal and setting up of emperors depended on them alone. For if the imperial succession was to be thought of as depending on the arrangement of the stars, what was needed except to wait for the future emperor to come to the throne, whoever he might be? Or if the succession was thought to depend on the will of God, what right did any human being have to meddle? For it is not the work of human foresight or zeal to understand God’s thought; and even if it were permitted, it would not be good for people, even the wisest of all, to think that they can plan better than God. If it was merely out of rash curiosity to see into the future that they showed so little judgment as to be ready to fall into danger, and to despise the laws long established among the Romans, and that at a time when it was not dangerous to practice pagan worship and to sacrifice, then in this they thought differently from Socrates. For when he was unjustly condemned to drink poison, he refused to save himself by breaking the laws under which he had been born and brought up, and he would not escape from prison, although it was in his power to do so. [a]